well I'm playing it for the first time, went in on Intense Mode without ever seeing anything about it.
am shortly before Valarie now.
I battle in Set style, I'm not what you would call a Pokémon prodigy, but I can find out what I need.
I've been progressing fine.
some hours went by raising some mons here and there, seeing if my ideas work.
by now, some EV training when I needed a couple more Speed or Attack points as well.
Speed up, Exp. All, and the EV rooms really make that part as short as it can get, excluding power items.
doesn't matter if enemies have EV trained mons, you can do it too. especially since the essential Speed Room is available from the start.
if you find that boring, you can debug, or find someone to debug.
if you now say debugging is lame, please decide.
it's either spending less time on an easier difficulty or investing more time for a harder one.
I love it to run into an A-Marowak, wonder why it deals tons of damage, then looking up the mon and understanding that it's having an exclusive item doubling its attack. and that Knock Off is a treasure against it.
can't speak about AI "cheating" with seeing your items, have seen no evidence myself. if true, awkward.
I agree on that scene with Madelis ; technically you can easily fix that with the auto save states, but at least after being knocked out, there should be the possibility to have access to boxes and something to level on.
up to then, even if it defied any logic to leave a certain place, the player was able to do just that, which I thought was very good with a very hard difficulty in mind.
however, overall, I have to disagree. the intense mode is not bad.
opposing mons might have all these tools, all I have is Oran Berries, and yet I prevail.
maybe the AI should complain about unfair competition against humans?
let's not even talk about RNG. it's a historically bad design as a main factor for sure, but you are able to reset unlimited times until you get favourable results.
you could complain about other games' high difficulties and how unfair they are, but then you go out there on youtube and you can easily see people doing it.
really tough modes are (or should) not meant to be cleared without proper investment of thought and/or time.